When You're Ready
by DjDangerLove
Summary: "Mike settles down next to him as if they're simply two brothers capable of touching shoulders and setting the world back up right, but they never have been and Anders doesn't think they can ever be." Brotherly one-shot for the seemingly not so brotherly.


I own nothing except a heart that loves The Almighty Johnsons and an imagination.

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><p>The neck of a vodka bottle fits perfectly in the loose fisted fingers of his right hand and dangles by his leg just enough so that the guarded part of him knows he doesn't need it, doesn't even want it, but he'll bring the wet rim of it to his lips every so often so he's every bit of the man the world knows him to be.<p>

He takes a burning swig, dropping the bottle down to sway next to his thigh after he's done and it slips in between his fingers in a slow descent like the dying flap of a crow's wing in one final desperate act of escaping an untimely death. However, he squeezes it just before it can flee from his possession and the bottle stills in his hand like the body of a lifeless bird. The mouth of the bottle brushes his lips again and the guarded part of him once again sinks down like a river stone, unique and treasurable, but lost beneath a polluted surface to never be found until someone drags the bottom looking for something far more cherished than he knows himself to be.

"Anders?"

Someone has appeared at the riverside causing unsettling ripples in the water. The vessel for the God of Poetry finds the thought of words painful and wets his smarting throat with a rush of vodka.

"What're you doing up here?"

The question is everything Anders expects and his fingers tighten around the bottle in his hand, holding fast and true to the deplored notion of himself that his older brother deems out of place in such a location worthy of admiration, like a brown stone amongst a river's treasure. Defiance creates a heavier rhythm in his heart, but it pumps blood a bit quicker, gives life to a fight previously deceased, and the corner of his mouth twitches upward at the fact that his body is the last thing to fail him in a world filled with betrayals.

"Anders."

His name again spills from an annoyed mouth like hands cutting through murky water in search of something to even be considered while deleting any response he may have given. It's not another act of defiance, never has been. It's just the way he's understood the world to operate. A name uncared for is a name in possession of a man far less wanted.

"Anders..._please_."

The glass of the bottle clinks against his teeth, vodka traveling down an undesired path, and he coughs to dislodge it with shaking shoulders. The world seems to tilt and sway with his efforts, and every bit of it seems to end up under his feet causing him to lurch forward with wide eyes and a panicked thought at the sight of the street too many feet below him.

Hands, rough and strong, and much like the ones belonging to his father that only ever hurt him, caught him by the shoulders and pulled him back with a curse pushing between clenched teeth. "Shit, come down from there."

Anders shakes his head, half to sort the twirling motion his vision seems to hold on to and half to symbolize he doesn't understand what Mike has commanded of him, because there's nothing to come down to. He's at the bottom of the river in unsalvageable condition.

"Let go," his brother commands as if it doesn't matter if Anders is a fossil of a misused life or still in the act of getting there, and the youngest of the two feels his vodka bottle sliding from in between his fingers at its own accord, or so he thinks for a spilt second until he connects his brother's words and the retreating drink. He squeezes his fingers, muscles bulging until they rise up to meet his brother's fingers of the other hand not on the bottle wrapped around his bicep.

He looks up, startled that his brother has latched on to him out of everything else worth catching. It frightens him in a way he's only given into privately and he tries to free himself from the caged world he's being dragged into for he knows he will be displayed like a rare stone blamed for single-handedly destroying the river in which it landed, isolated and hated, and he twists violently at the thought.

"Anders, stop!"

But he can't, knows that if he does he'll be taken from the dark abyss that he's buried himself in for years and it makes his breath catch in his throat. He's stumbling back, choking on air much in the same way he coughed over his vodka before his feet catch on something and he's sent to the ground.

He doesn't stop, though. He still scrambles away, burying himself back underneath the bottom of the river floor with an unbeknownst shattered bottle in his hand while the other slips against its remains on the rooftop with ripping skin.

"Hey, hey! Woah, easy! Easy, Anders. Calm down, alright?"

But Anders only stops because his back collides with something hard and he glances up at Mike to make sure he looks blurry and undefined as he should through several feet of murky river. However, he doesn't and Anders flinches harshly as Mike appears as clear as purified water and eye level with him at the bottom.

"It's okay," Mike says as if it doesn't matter that somebody like him, God of the Hunt, busies themselves with wandering among the detritus of the river in search of a nonexistent treasure. "Come on, buddy. Just breathe," he continues, voice as calm as he can probably make it because it's the same one he used on Axl several times while consoling him as a baby.

Anders starts to panic for another reason all together after that, because suddenly he's complying, taking deep breaths, letting the broken bottle be pried from his fingers, and allowing Mike to rest one of his hands on the back of his neck. His body shakes in his newly found panic, wondering if Mike has somehow taken Bragi from him along with everything else.

He shakes his head, trying to get his tongue to work around words he can't create, but undeniably wants. He wants to tell Mike to give Bragi back and take him all at the same time, but every inch of him shakes as if the water he's inhabited for years has suddenly turned to ice, but Ty isn't anywhere around and despite the quivering of his body he isn't cold.

He's scared and it's far worse, because he knows that if he's scared there's something he actually cares for and he's come to understand that he isn't capable of doing so when he's hidden away, so he's just an asshole instead.

"It's okay, Anders. It _will_ be okay."

Anders wants to laugh, and maybe he does, because Mike makes a familiar sound of losing patience, but for a reason the younger one can't comprehend Mike settles down next to him as if they're simply two brothers capable of touching shoulders and setting the world back up right, but they never have been and Anders doesn't think they can ever be.

He shakes his head with the silent thought as if Mike's suggested aloud that they pretend that there isn't something like a river, dangerously swift and misleadingly murky, between them, but Mike shifts, upper arm brushing Anders' shoulder in a way that makes the younger one feel small in more ways than one, and waits.

Against every muscle in his body begging him not to, he turns to look at his older brother because Mike's an impatient man waiting for a hesitant treasure and he feels as if he should just urge him to look elsewhere for something better before the yelling starts. However, there's not a bulging vein in sight and the only thing that appears to be restless are his hands as if he's found what he's looking for but too scared to touch it out of fear that it will turn to dust on his fingertips and leave him reminiscent.

Mike follows Anders' gaze and fists his hands with white-turning knuckles before looking back up at the face of his brother. He opens his mouth with a committed head motion, but his jaw mimics that of a speechless fish and words are swallowed before a breath of courage and then he settles on, "Whenever you're ready, Anders."

Anders sinks further into the concrete of the rooftop, because he's not ready, not even close, and a part of him thinks he doesn't ever want to be, doesn't ever want to give the world the guarded part of himself again. He just wants to stay a brown stone, for without the futile and undesired, treasures wouldn't exist. Bragi is valuable. Anders is not.

But Mike is suddenly pushing a beer bottle into his uncut hand, even going as far as wrapping Anders' uncoordinated, shaking fingers around it and pressing on them until he feels his brother hold it himself, but the younger Johnson stares at it as if he doesn't know what to do with it until Mike has one in his own hand and sips greedily at it.

Anders watches and slowly mimics him as if they were in a perfect world of older brothers setting faultless examples, and Mike tries his best not to tense at the expectations and pressure placed upon him once again.

The beer travels quickly and tasteless down his throat, but he drinks at it with every ounce of Bragi he can muster until it's gone. He's slipping sideways, proof that the world can't be placed back on its axis simply by Mike and Anders pretending to embody the notion of brotherhood, but Mike's also mumbling something about the effects of too much alcohol and Anders' liver while squirming under the added weight of his drunk brother.

"You gave me more," Anders slurs in his own defense, but grins delightedly. However, Mike just replies, "Yeah, I did," as straight and even as he always does when he's done with his younger brother's antics and Anders' smile drops after that, because he not only heard his brother say it, but he felt it tremble against his ear.

Rubbing his eyes, Anders' vision swims with slightly wrinkled skin and the material of a deep red shirt that mimics the color of blood trickling from burning cuts on his left hand before the smell of wood and alcohol twirl under his nose like a funnel cloud. It's terrifying and calming all at once and his heart can't decide on which feeling to work with, but there's a pressure on his shoulders, circling him, yet a small part of him knows it's nothing close to being trapped, so his heartbeat settles for an uncertain, but timid rhythm.

He twists, and Mike knows it's Bragi trying to get away and Anders trying to hide, so he just lets him wiggle and turn like something caught in a current, and mumbles words that mean nothing to the God of Poetry yet everything to a brother with enough bravery to listen.

But even as Anders stills, he still doesn't understand, because he never has.

"Whenever you're ready, Anders," Mike says again after his mumblings, hoping that this time, where he's had to watch his drunken little brother teeter on the ledge of the rooftop of the bar, Anders will finally decipher Mike's words for what they are even after all the years of saying it.

Anders is rigid beneath Mike's arm and he feels his heart decide with certainty that it's frightened, because Mike squeezes him as if he's finally found the courage to hold a found treasure and mumbles into the tufts of his hair again, "Whenever _you_ are ready."

And Anders understands after that, because even though Mike squeezes him, he'll eventually let him go. He'll let him sink back down underneath the water like a brown stone despite everything he loves and values, hiding it from the world and even himself without the promise of ever finding it again, lying to the world that the only thing that could be found was the tainted piece he brought back with him.

It is then that Anders trembles underneath Mike's arm, knowing that his brother isn't standing above the water at the riverside in hopes of finding a treasure, but guarding the last piece of it left, for ever how withered it becomes.

Mike squeezes him a bit more, wishing that it would convince his little brother that he need not be afraid, but knows that it won't, so he tries to enjoy the small moment with Anders no matter how broken and fragile he really is, because soon he'll be gone, buried beneath the protection of his older brother like a brown stone under several feet of river water, so that the world doesn't completely take him away.

He's not ready, not buried deep enough to face those who expect only Bragi, but when he is, Mike will leave the riverside until Anders needs him again.

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><p>AN: Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think!<p> 


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